Chapter 486 - 486: The Titan's Trial

Kian sat straight down in the chair.

"All right, power it on. Let me show you what I'm made of."

Boothe pulled a bundle of neural interfaces free from the Ascension Throne and wired them into Kian.

Thanks to his power armour usage, Kian's body already carried numerous neural ports, and every single one of them now filled up with cabling.

Boothe explained:

"My lord, I will now gradually channel the data-stream produced by the cogitator array through your mind.

All you need to do is withstand the data overflow of 5,000 cogitator arrays and hold on for at least twenty-four hours. Manage that, and you will have passed the test.

At which point, you will earn the right to ascend to the Reaver Titan itself, to sit upon its true throne, and face the genuine trial of the Titan's own machine spirit."

Kian asked, "I just need to withstand 5,000 cogitator arrays? What can an ordinary person handle?"

"An ordinary person can typically withstand somewhere between two hundred and four hundred. The best candidate we've ever tested managed fifteen hundred, still nowhere close to five thousand."

Kian said he understood, and told him to get on with it.

Boothe worked the console beside the Ascension Throne and finally pulled a lever.

The next instant, seated in the throne, Kian's brow furrowed as an overwhelming data-stream came pouring in through the neural interfaces, straight into his mind.

The data was a chaotic mess, this year's steel output figures, ration statistics for factory workers in the sump levels, weapons testing evaluation data, all of it flooding through Kian's mind at once, dizzying and disorienting.

Eyes closed, he asked Boothe: "How many arrays have you got running?"

Boothe glanced at the console. "Five hundred."

Kian said: "Is that all you've got? Push it straight to two thousand."

Seeing Kian's confidence, Boothe gripped a lever and pushed it upward.

The data-stream flowing into Kian's mind climbed, five hundred, a thousand, fifteen hundred, straight on to two thousand.

Boothe watched him with mounting concern, genuinely afraid the overwhelming flood might reduce Kian to a vegetable on the spot.

Right now, an endless torrent of data flickered through Kian's mind, his consciousness like a man on a small wooden raft, and the river he was crossing was the Yellow River itself.

Kian gritted his teeth. "MORE!!"

Boothe's heart rate spiked. He pushed the lever further, all the way up to twenty-five hundred.

Now Kian's consciousness wasn't merely crossing the Yellow River, it was crossing it during flood season, the raft one careless moment away from being capsized entirely.

Kian held steady for nearly ten minutes, then shouted: "MORE!!"

Cold sweat broke out across Boothe's forehead, equal parts exhilaration and terror.

Could it be? Was a genuine Titan pilot about to be born, right here, under his own hand?

His mechanical hand carefully gripped the console's control lever, easing it upward bit by bit, taking a full minute to bring the load all the way to three thousand.

A full three thousand. Three thousand cogitator arrays' worth of raw data overflow, pouring directly and unfiltered through Kian's mind, enough to have his eyes rolling back in his skull.

His consciousness, that small wooden raft, was no longer merely crossing the flooded Yellow River, it was now attempting to cross the entire Pacific Ocean.

Kian, hands trembling, reached into his robe and pulled out a Regen-Bolt, jabbing it into his own arm, staving off permanent organic damage.

Then he pulled out a tin of Sanctified Anointing Oil and dabbed it on, boosting his Focus by ten.

"MORE!! Push it to thirty-five hundred!!"

Boothe's mechanical hand began to shake as he pushed the lever, all the way to thirty-five hundred.

At that point, Kian fell completely silent, seated rigid in the chair, every muscle in his body locked taut, fighting with everything he had against the storm-force torrent of data.

Boothe was consumed by pure exhilaration. Thirty-five hundred! Someone was actually withstanding the psychic shock of thirty-five hundred cogitator arrays!!

By official protocol, ascending to the Titan and facing the true trial of its machine spirit required withstanding the full 5,000-array shock.

But in practical terms, withstanding thirty-five hundred already proved a psychic force powerful enough to more than qualify Kian for the trial itself.

And besides, this Titan had gone twenty years without a Principal, and the world was on the verge of total extinction at the hands of the greenskins.

Whatever the reasoning, Kian deserved the chance to ascend to that sacred engine.

"A Principal. A true, honored Principal is about to be born!!"

Boothe stared at Kian, sitting there in the chair with a thoroughly wrecked expression, filled with something close to worship.

He immediately reached for his comm, contacting Magos Ferrocore:

"M-magos! You need to come see this. You absolutely need to come see this right now!!"

A few dozen minutes later, Magos Ferrocore arrived at the cogitator vault with his templar-guard escort, standing before the Ascension Throne.

Boothe, thoroughly unable to contain himself, rushed up to Ferrocore, practically bouncing with excitement, pointing at Kian.

"Thirty-five hundred! He withstood the shock of thirty-five hundred cogitator arrays!!

My lord, he, he, he could genuinely become a Principal, a true Principal!!"

Boothe had expected Ferrocore to share his overwhelming excitement.

But the massive mechanical worm simply stood there, calm, his fully mechanized face betraying no reaction of any kind.

The room fell into silence for a long moment. Ferrocore glanced at Kian, still convulsing in the throne, then at the "3500" displayed on the console, and his vox produced a burst of binary speech that nearly made Boothe's mind seize up entirely.

"Just now, the xenos battlegroup, originally heading toward the main hive, has changed course. They are heading toward the Titan Temple instead.

I dispatched one hundred thousand templar-guard to intercept them. They held for barely an hour before being wiped out entirely.

The xenos battlegroup is inbound to our position. They will arrive within twenty-four hours.

I have therefore initiated the destruction protocol. The sacred Titan must never be defiled by xenos hands. I will drive the Titan into the molten lava pool. The sacred engine and all of us will return, together, to the Omnissiah's embrace."

☆☆☆

-> 20 Advanced chapters Now Available on Patreon!!

-> https://www.pat-reon.co-m/c/Inkshaper

(Just remove the hyphen (-) to access patreon normally)

If you like this novel please consider leaving a review that's help the story a lot Thank you